Nikita Irwin told the Federal Court she had dinner with Brittany Higgins the day after the alleged rape and Ms Higgins said: “I met Bruce.”
Major Irwin was at The Dock Hotel with Mr Lehrmann, Ms Higgins and other colleagues on 22 March 2019.
She didn’t go to the nightclub 88mph after the pub, but the next day she received a text from another co-worker, Lauren Gain, saying, “Brittany and Bruce have met.”
That evening she told the court she had dinner with Ms Higgins during which she said: “I met Bruce.”
Major Irwin said she had not responded to Ms Higgins’ disclosure.
When Network Ten’s lawyer asked Major Irwin if she had spoken to Mr Lehrmann in the pub that evening, she replied: “I had a bad feeling about Bruce.”
When asked why she didn’t like him, she replied: “It’s just a woman’s intuition, Dr. Collins, I can’t explain.”
She also told the court that the following week Ms Higgins told her that Mr Lehrmann had allegedly assaulted her.
“She said, ‘Bruce had some whiskey he wanted to show me, when we got back to Parliament House, I fell asleep on the sofa and woke up and he was on top of me,'” Major Irwin said.
She asked Ms Higgins if it was an assault and Ms Higgins replied “definitely”.
However, Major Irwin also said she was not sure whether Ms Higgins had described the situation as rape.
Major Irwin recalled Ms Higgins telling her in early April 2019 that she had decided not to make a formal complaint because police had told her it would be too difficult to secure a conviction.
